Breeze of change among Muslims
By Praful Bidwai If there is an Indian equivalent of the Tiger Woods phenomenon, where a young person makes an unexpected and dramatic impact on a sport and its popular perception, it is undoubtedly Sania Mirza.
The 18 year-old tennis player hit it big when she entered the third round of the Australian Open and went down to Serena Williams, but only after a spirited fight.
Sania has emerged not just a superb sportsperson, but a youth icon, indeed a "brand" in her own right.
Advertisers are flooding her with offers to promote everything from mobile phones and processed foods to cosmetics.
As Alyque Padamsee, considered some kind of wizard in the advertising world, put it in a newspaper interview: "Not since P.T.
Usha has India had a female sports star of this calibre.
Sania is young and hasn't yet achieved [her] full potential.
So I feel she is an advertiser's dream.
She can become a superstar and an icon for youth.
Soon, there will be 'Sania mania' sweeping the land!" Marketing gurus already see Sania Mirza as a role model for the young.
She personifies the "new India"-someone with tremendous energy and self-confidence and the desire to achieve and excel.
Besides, says an adman: "She is good-looking, young, athletic, gutsy and consistent.
She is on a roll.
She is very hot for the advertisers." Apart from glamour, Sania Mirza possesses a simple, wholesome charm that comes out of sheer earnestness.
There's a down-to-earth quality to her, which goes beyond the transitory appeal typical of models.
Unlike actresses, Sania is "real".
Even before her Australian Open debut, Sania Mirza endorsed five brands including GVK Industries, her first sponsor, Atlas Cycles, Tata Tea, Sahara and Sports Authority of Andhra Pradesh.
Now, she will probably do a few more.
More important, she has been appointed ambassador of the "Save the Girl Child" campaign of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Remarkably, it's for the first time that a Muslim woman has been assigned the role of raising gender awareness in a society which literally kills millions of female foetuses.
There lies the true significance of the Sania Mirza phenomenon.
She has come to embody a number of aspects of modernity, freedom and rationality-the very opposite of the stereotypes that Indian Muslims are straitjacketed into.
Many conservatives, especially Bharatiya Janata Party sympathisers, believe Indian Muslims are irredeemably backward, illiterate, overly religious, bigoted and resistant to change, especially in matters of dress, customs, personal laws, and family planning, and that they are incapable of breaking the stranglehold of the mullah and coming out of the burqa.
In their view, Muslims are somewhat inferior under-socialised human beings who deserve pity or sympathy, not equal treatment or respect.
The Hindu-nationalist as well as the middle class pseudo-liberal is deeply uncomfortable with the modern, liberal, educated, well-informed Muslim who has an open mind and cosmopolitan outlook.
The discomfort is all the greater if the person is a woman.
Sania Mirza represents all of those modern attributes.
And yet, she has become an irresistible, irrepressible icon by dint of her talent and her transparent charm.
This is a major transformation of the Indian Muslim stereotype.
Exceptional as she is in her impact as an icon, Sania Mirza is by no means the sole Muslim to have made a mark in her/his field and defied the stereotype of incurable backwardness and social servitude.
The Three Khans hold near-complete and unchallenged sway over Bollywood.
Yet other Muslims have distinguished themselves in recent years in films: Shabana Azmi, Tabu, Saif Ali Khan, Saeed Mirza, Zayed Khan, Javed Akhtar.
They no longer have to mask their identity as the earlier generation did by adopting Hindu names-as with Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari and Madhubala.
Similarly, in the field of sports, the achievements of Mohammed Azharuddin, Irfan Pathan, Mohammed Kaif, Zaheer Khan and Syed Kirmani are far too well-known to need recounting.
Remarkably, to be recognised, these stars don't have to hide their Muslimsness or wear their patriotism on the sleeve.
They can be "natural", they don't need to over-achieve.
But it is misleading-and profoundly wrong-to imagine that the rising profile of the modern Muslim is confined to the entertainment business or sports alone.
Consider this: Sixty years ago, the richest Indian was the Nizam of Hyderabad, a thorough feudal who derived his authority and wealth from inheritance and, eventually, plunder.
Today, the richest Indian is Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd, one of the stars in the Information Technology firmament.
Wipro belongs to one of the most modern, internationalised, competitive and technology-intensive sectors of Indian industry.
Unlike the Nizam, Premji is wedded to modern values and to promoting education.
He earned his millions not through inheritance, but entrepreneurship.
He's driven by a strong work ethic.
Yet another high-performing industry in India is pharmaceuticals.
Among its top-profile companies are Cipla and Wockhardt, both owned and managed by forward-looking Muslims.
Dr Yusuf Hamied of Cipla is a Cambridge-educated chemist who runs one of the most dynamic research and development outfits in the drug industry anywhere.
Cipla can produce anti-AIDS drugs at 1/50th the price at which US companies sold them until recently.
It has become one of the most competitive producers of generic drugs in the world.
Some of the topmost advertising professionals are Muslims, including Alyque Padamsee, Mohammed Khan, Muzaffar Ali and Rafeeq Ellias.
This is a sophisticated quaternary sub-sector of the service economy.
In modern art, it's impossible to ignore the pivotal importance of M.F.
Raza, Akbar Padamsee, Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh and Tyeb Mehta.
The list can be greatly expanded.
The point is simple.
A significant modern Muslim intelligentsia has crystallised in varying fields, including academics (examples, Irfan Habib, Mushirul Hasan, Shahid Amin, Zoya Hasan), avant garde theatre (Habib Tanveer, E.
Alkazi, Jabbar Patel of "Ghashiram Kotwal" fame, and Zohra Sehgal), literature (Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ali Sardar Jafri and Kaifi Azmi), and journalism (M.J.
Akbar, Zahid Ali Khan).
This intelligentsia is qualitatively different from the old Muslim aristocracy to which, say, the Nawab of Pataudi and Abbas Ali Baig belonged.
It is an accomplished group of self-made liberal middle class professionals.
Its sensibilities are quintessentially modern, secular and universalist.
These are not Muslim intellectuals as such.
They are intellectuals first, Muslims second, by birth.
The winds of modernisation and secularisation are sweeping through the larger Indian Muslim community to a far greater extent than is recognised.
Sania Mirza represents this very change.
Most members of this modernising group are not deracinated or uprooted from traditions and customs.
For instance, Sania's family is deeply religious.
I spoke to Sania's father, Imran.
He said: "We pray five times a day, read the Quran and observe rozas (fast)a during Ramzan.
My wife and I went to the Haj recently." So it won't do to stereotype then as stray, isolated individuals detached from their community.
Imran Mirza and his wife are both graduates.
He started as a sports journalist and went into printing.
He's now a builder.
Yet, he's sensitive to the criticism that Sania's tennis shorts violate what some consider the "Islamic dress code".
(He believes there's forgiveness in Islam).
Imran isn't wealthy.
"It wasn't easy to put Sania through expensive training in tennis, even her racquets and shoes don't come cheap", he says.
"We were lucky to have found a sponsor when Sania was 13".
Reddy-a "Hindu" business group.
The forces of secularisation and modernity are gaining strength among Indian Muslims.
A new awareness is growing about the importance of modern education as the key to the professions and government jobs.
The Siasat Daily of Hyderabad has done pioneering work in running teacher training courses, operating clinics, coaching students in science, medicine and engineering, and training young women for call centre jobs.
Siasat has become the first Indian daily to set up its own Internet website.
Similarly, Jamia Hamdard in Delhi has launched a successful programme to prepare young Muslims for the civil services.
Other trusts are educating the Muslims about lifestyle issues, such as the virtues of a good diet, including a strong component of vegetables and fruits.
A breeze of modernist social reform is sweeping through Muslim women too.
They have set up an all-woman personal law board.
A recent comprehensive professional survey designed by Ritu Menon and Zoya Hasan, shows that Muslim women's backwardness is less a function of religious belief than of socio-economic status and geographical location.
In some respects-e.g.
decision-making about family size, household purchases and political participation-they are less backward than their Hindu sisters.
There is a lesson here for the larger society.
It should respect and strengthen the pro-reform trend not just among Muslim high-achievers and stars, but among ordinary Muslims too.
The future of India lies in modernisation, and reform based on the values of the Enlightenment.
These values should be promoted in personal as well as public life.
Only thus can India become tolerant of, and comfortable with, differences-a society that's truly pluralist and secular.
VIEW FROM THE GALLERY Election no guarantee of democracy By Brij Bhardwaj Elections are flavour of the season.
One has been held in Iraq under the shadow of gun, mortar fire and planes falling out of the sky, but according to U.S officials led by Condoleezza Rice new Secretary of State it has been a success and even U.N Secretary General Kofi Annan has called it a good beginning.
India also held elections for civic bodies for the first time in Jammu and Kashmir after a period of thirty years.
Three more States that is Haryana, Jharkand and Bihar will also exercise a democratic option, but if you are looking for democracy in any form as solution of world problems, you will be disappointed as these elections leave much to be desired If Iraq was to set an example for the Arab world, it would be a bad example for anyone to cite as a heavy price has been paid in blood and agony.
It has divided people on regional lines instead of uniting them and seeds of discord sown by these elections will continue to flower for years to come and people of Iraq will continue to ask if such a heavy price is essential for getting a democratic set up.
One has to ask people of Iraq living without power, water and other essentials if they are feeling at all liberated as claimed by Uncle Sam.
One can predict that with elections over, a time bomb has started clicking in Iraq and the coalition forces occupying the country could any day pack up their bags and leave Iraq to deal with chaos and confusion created by a world power.
We may not see repeat of scenes witnessed in Vietnam where Americans were evacuated with the help of helicopters leaving behind thousands to suffer for having made the mistake of casting their lot with Americans.
Over the years Americans and Vietnamese have probably reconciled, but wounds left by Vietnam conflict are yet to be healed.
The wounds inflicted by Iraq will be deeper as the very basis of invasion of Iraq are under question.
No Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found nor any links with Al Qaeda established, but leaders of USA and Britain continue to justify attack on Iraq.
The unfortunate part of the conflict is that the entire region will have to pay the price of growth of religious fundamentalism.
If the House of Saudi and Kuwait are under threat today some responsibility for it should be accepted by Western powers who have been instrumental in growth of feeling among the Muslims that they are the prime targets of Western powers.
Be it Palestine or any part of the world , the young men and women who come out in streets fighting tanks and helicopters with old world weapons like stones there is growing feeling that they will not get justice in the present world.
The rulers of Arab world may express sympathy for the cause of fellow Muslims, but are totally helpless in changing the rules of the game.
If world is moving towards growing inequalities, it is also making some people desperate.
It is happening on the international scale and is also happening in India.
A suicide bomber in Palestine and a suicide bomber in Andhra Pradesh, Jharkand or Bihar have a lot in common.
They all share a common feeling that justice is not being done to them in present world.
It would be very easy to call it a failure of democracy in India as well as in other parts of the world, but it would at best be an escapist attitude.
For instance there is need to know why more and more criminal elements are getting into our legislatures.
Why people charged with murders and other crimes are able to get elected.
Why our courts can not convict these persons and put them behind bars instead of roaming free.
Why our political parties can not get together and enact laws to debar criminals from contesting.
If such situations are not changed a time will come when people will see their faith in democracy itself Shaken.
Before such a situation emerges some action will have to be taken.
If the problem was limited to a single State or a single country, one could easily ignore it and hope that over a period of time the checks and balances which are a part of democratic system will take care of them.
Democracy is favoured choice of governance for the simple reason that it has built in systems to take care of any aberrations.
But what is happening is that all those who are expected to work this system are sabotaging it from within.
A time has come when we should seriously look at the growth of Para military forces in the country.
The investment made in raising forces to use strong arm methods is much more as compared to investments made in improving prospects of employment through education and improvement of skills.
There is need to compare the two sets of figures as even the Britishers who were outsiders never had to depend .to that extent on the use of force to rule the country.
The tragedy is that the situation as far as law and order is deteriorating every day instead of improving.
One only has to see the newspaper headlines giving figures about kidnapping, murders and dacoities to realize that the issue of good governance is failing in its basic duty of offering security of life and property to ordinary citizens.
The battle in days to come will not be easy and it will have to be fought on every front where a poor and underdeveloped country moves towards democracy.
In this world systems are better developed in some countries and yet to be established in others, but there is no doubt that elections alone are not solutions, they also have to be credible.
A time has come when Indian leaders should put their heads together and find solutions to make our democracy more equal and justice done to all shades of people.
This can be the only guarantee against people taking to arms or joining suicide squads.
Terrorism is bad but you can not fight it with force only without tackling its basic cause.
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